How Exkalibur started their logo design journey

Company name

Overview

I run a leadership and business consultancy focused on the middle market. I write a regular column for a New York Times affiliate in the SF Bay area entitled "Building a Business". I will be running a series of national webinars in Q1, on behalf of some of our own product offerings as well as a national strategy execution firm. You can find out more about me and Exkalibur at http://www.Exkalibur.com

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

The primary audience will be middle market CEOs and senior executives in the SF Bay area, although the "Exkalibur" portion of the logo will be used for national branding, national column and blog, etc. It will also emphasize the metaphor of "helping executives pull the sword from the stone", and as the legend of King Arthur tells it, it was pulled from the stone not from strength but from understanding.

I'd like to create a single logo, for consistent branding, similar to the Exkalibur Sword logo.jpg in the attachments, I would use that on my web site and business card, and get rid of the 2nd picture of the sword in the stone on the web site and the business card.

Requirements

I first adopted the Exkalibur name years ago as a metaphor for "helping executives pull the sword from the stone". One day, I noticed that if I changed the traditional "c" (in the word spelled as <Excalibur>), my daughter's name, Kali, was embedded in the word <Exkalibur> with a "k". I've trademarked it, bought the rights to the web site and have used it ever since.

As you can see from the picture below (Exkalibur sword logo), my brother's design assistant (they make logo merchandise) created a new logo used for embroidery products, that I like very much although it is NOT what appears currently on my web site. I've attached the current heading used at my web site, Exkalibur.com, which you'll see is very different. I've also attached the logo used on my business card which is different again, and I'd like them all to conform.

More completely, as I'm branding the <Exkalibur Leadership Forum>, I'd like to use the sword icon not only as the "K" in Exkalibur but the shape of the sword also seems to lend itself to the "L" in <Leadership>, and more perfectly to the "F" in <Forum>. I have attached a very crude drawing - I'm terrible - to illustrate using one sword, possibly, for all 3 words or using it separately in each word.